The maker of jolly expensive printer ink, HP, is having a problem with fleeing staff. Autonomy founder Mike Lynch join a long line of top managers to leave the software maker since HP bought it last year.

Apparently HP CEO Meg Whitman has had the challenging task of going on a charm offensive. She has told Autonomy staff they have a bright future with HP.

The company bought Autonomy for more than $11 billion as part of a daft move by the then CEO Leo Apothiker to turn HP into SAP. However Autonomy did rather badly last quarter and was to blame for a disappointing performance of HP's software division.

Whitman said in an email that it was "always hard when a charismatic founder, who has built a great company leaves." But she added that Autonomy staff had a "very bright future" aft HP. She stressed that Lynch's departure was down to the division's poor performance rather than the notion that Autonomy had no place in HP's corporate culture.

Already one in five Automony people think that the the writing is on the wall and have cleaned out their desk and moved on to greener pastures. Lynch will be replaced by HP's chief strategy officer Bill Veghte.

World on the street is that perhaps things had not gone so well at integrating Automony and Lynch took the fall for it. HP had not done well with its software, not just around Autonomy but in other sides of its software suite as well.

The problem is that HP does things one way while Autonomy did them another. Interestingly enoguh, Autonomy never fell short on its sales targets until it was bought by HP.

The head of HP's Personal Systems Group is jolly pleased that HP will not be trying to sell his division off. Paul Hunter, Head of HP PSG UK and Ireland said that he was confident of our ability to thrive and grow should the business be spun out into a separate company or even sold.

But he was pleased the division will remain closely integrated. Hunter said that the division had undergone a robust, and at times very public, audit which could only make us fitter and stronger. HP decided to reverse a plan, touted by its former CEO Leo Apothiker to flog off the hardware division and turn the company into a business software outfit like his former company SAP. Cynics claimed that Apothiker, who was a software bloke, did not really know how to deal with hardware so he thought flogging it would be easier than learning.

Hunter said that HP's strength comes from being together. “Looking at the results over the related period for the PSG business, we have performed well. Market share has remained remarkably resilient. We are in a strong position and are striving to increase the gap on our competition,” he said.